Interlude
by Lady NeverAfterNon
Summary: Julie and R share stolen moments as they change the world.
1. Interlude

**Author's Note:** _Warm Bodies is going straight on my favorite films list. Such a great movie: awesome cast, awesome story, and I absolutely loved the book. Anyway, please let me know what you think!_

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**Interlude**

**By:** Lady NeverAfterNon

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Julie sits on the floor of her bedroom, tucked into the corner between a wall and one of her little bookcases. R is flush up next to her, his elbow rests on her knees and her cold bare toes are jammed up under his jean clad butt. Nora is passed out on Julie's bed, snoring softly. The remains of several ratty card games, Slap Jack and Uno (R is decidedly better at Uno), litter the ground around them. The only light in the room is a camping lantern covered with a paper shade that Julie punched star shapes out of. As a result it throws clumsy constellations of blue light around the room.

The Big Dipper is lopsided and Orion's belt is sagging and if he had pants they'd be down around his starry knees; Julie doesn't care and R doesn't mention it.

She is so, so very tired.

It's almost deathly silent, except for the occasional barking dog and Nora's snoring, and the quiet holds them like a blanket. Julie is exhausted: too many long days filled with zombie-to-human orientation for R's massive 'family' on top with her other duties. She doesn't want to sleep, though. She and R don't get much time to themselves now that the fun part of the adventure is over, it's all she can do to have dinner with him once and a while. They started a race, but now they've slowed and the rest of the zombies and humans are leaping and bounding past them towards an unforeseeable finish line.

Julie wonders if she and R have found their own finish line, because while he isn't a corpse he isn't exactly fully human, and she certainly doesn't feel completely human anymore either. She knows he doesn't need to eat yet, and his sleeping is erratic. Julie still loves Pad Thai but she doesn't seem to need to eat as much or as often anymore, though she still sleeps when she can.

She thinks that maybe when the Beast kissed Beauty and broke the spell, that maybe Beauty got a bit of the Beast when the Beast got his Beauty. Ugh, just thinking about the new horizons they were charting made her head hurt.

His eyes, that brilliant shade of gold like a pirate coin in a tropic sun, meet hers and she suspect that his thoughts might perhaps mirror her own. She raises an eyebrow and cocks her head.

He quirks a smile at her in answer and shrugs his shoulder, because he knows it will get a rise out of her.

"Shrugger," she says affectionately. She's quiet, because Nora is unconscious five feet away, and her walls are horribly thin.

That doesn't stop her from climbing into his lap though. Julie straddles his slim hips and slides her hands into his shaggy black hair. R's arms fold around her, and while sometimes she forgets just how much bigger he is than her, its times that these that remind her.

She kisses _him_ this time. Though it's hard to tell just who lunged for whom first in that dirty cistern a few weeks ago.

It's slow and not rushed, she's too tired for serious hanky panky, though she wishes to hell that she wasn't. R is getting better at this kissing business and Julie is happy to simultaneously be his teacher and reap the fruits of his learning. She's so tired, but this moment with R is a coveted thing and Julie is very, very greedy.

She tells her exhaustion to bugger off, and her drooping eyelids to shape up and look alive.

Julie murmurs the words to 'Rock You Like A Hurricane' as she moves from his mouth, down the line of his jaw and down his neck, punctuating each word with a tiny nibble or wet kiss. She always likes the way the thin skin of his throat moves under her lips when she's kissing him and he swallows. She can hear every small gasp or breathless whimper. God she loves those sounds.

R shakes with laughter when she rests her forehead in the crook of his neck. The noise is like muffled rocks in a coffee grinder, and it makes Nora shift and mutter something about zombie nurses. It is freaking _adorable_. It also makes Julie wish she wasn't so damn tired, or else she'd jump his bones and make his poor brain explode with more fireworks than the Fourth of July, but there's nothing she can do about it. It's her own fault she's so busy.

That doesn't mean he gets to make fun of her though.

Julie pulls back and puts her hands on her hips. "It's generally considered bad form to laugh at a girl when she's trying to be sexy," she whispers, grinning, and poking him in the chest.

R grins back at her and holds up two fingers, and Julie squints at them.

"If you can tell me how many fingers I'm holding up, sweetheart, then we'll go downstairs where Nora can't hear us and give your neighbors something to bang on the walls about," R tells her, waggling his fingers like a challenge.

Julie loves challenges. It's part of the reason she didn't lose her shit on the four hour zombie march after her first meeting with R. It's also why she couldn't let her father shoot him in the head, and why she stubbornly refused to let him go when he was bleeding out on the floor of the infirmary. She will haul R kicking and screaming back to life, whatever it takes. She hasn't had to do it yet though, so far he's followed her willingly.

She loves R for it, from his klepto loot hoarding (he still brings back things that catch his eye to her room; yesterday he left a metal bookend in the shape of a turtle on her dresser), to his expressive shrugs, his crazy eclectic music taste, and his gentle love for her and the way he sticks by her.

She still can't believe sometimes that R loves her. _Her_, crazy Julie Cabernet, with her head in the clouds and her always asking questions: why this-, what would you do if-?

So that's why she squints at his fingers and tries to give him an honest answer, even though they're fuzzy and waving back and forth like drunk white butterflies.

"Um, three?"

"Nope. Two." He plants a wet affectionate kiss on her forehead and Julie pouts.

"Fooey," she muttered. "I thought for sure it was three."

R unfolds his long gangly limbs long enough to snag a free blanket, which is no easy task because Nora has rolled herself into most of Julie's quilts like an alligator. Then he's sitting back against the wall, enshrining them both into the quilt. She wonders whether his butt is going to fall asleep from sitting on the floor too long, but R doesn't seem to care.

It's nice and warm in their little cocoon. Julie has her head tucked up under his chin, her ear is up against the hard wall of his chest, but that skin and bone cage is still thin enough that she can hear his heart thumping strong within it.

Julie counts it as one of the most beautiful sounds she's ever heard.

She's happy. Exhausted as hell, but so happy she wants to explode at the same time. It's a weird feeling, one that she can't quite catalogue but one she wouldn't trade for anything either.

R rests his cheek on the top of her head. His breathing is slow and deep, and for a moment she thinks that maybe he is asleep. So Julie looks up at John Lennon floating above her head like a ghost or a memory, then closes her eyes and murmurs against his skin, "I love you, R."

He hears her.

She knows this because those long arms of his fold her closer to him, inviting her to tuck her nose into the gap between his hoodie and his skin, which she does because _god he smells good_, and because after a pause of basking in the wake of her soft whisper, he says it back.

"I love you too."

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_Fin_


	2. Interim

**Author's Note:** _Sooo, yeah. I can't stop my Warm Bodies shtick, so I'll just keep cranking out one-shots for this until the urge goes away. So they're stand alone chapters and they're not necessarily in order time-wise, just as a warning._

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**Interim **

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Julie sits outside the med tent in the dirt, still in her sodden sweater and jeans. Her knees are drawn up to her chest, not because she's cold because she is fragging _freezing_, but because she's scared to move. It feels like time has up and slowed down to a crawl. The roaring in her ears doesn't help, and neither does the silent wall of zombies surrounding the med tent where their unofficial leader/messiah is getting her father's bullet dug out of his chest.

Julie finds herself wanting to apologize. The humans don't have hospitals, they have dirty tents in the middle of a football stadium. They don't have doctors, they have trauma surgeons who never went to medical school. She doesn't tell R's family this though. It wouldn't help things at all.

The zombies stand shoulder to shoulder, several bodies deep, their unblinking grey eyes fixed on the tent like the combined forces of their will could somehow force a miracle to happen. Every now and then one or two of them will drop their stares down to where she sits huddled in the mud, and while Julie knows it isn't healthy way to think, she thinks she can discern disappointment in their timeless undead gazes.

She feels clammy, wet, alone, and miserable. If she loses R after everything else, Julie thinks that she might break apart like a glass asked to hold too much. It isn't just water soaking her shirt. Most of it is R's blood, his new hard won blood gained so soon but about to be lost forever. Julie is disgusted with herself. Some marvel she turned out to be- she couldn't even stop R from getting hurt, even though she tried so hard to keep him safe.

_Keep you safe_.

Those words rattle around in her brain like low, soft eulogies. I'm so sorry, she wants to say to him. She wants to scream it. The board isn't even between us, is it? You saved me more times than I could ever even hope to repay, and when it was finally my turn to step up to the plate, I couldn't deliver.

Julie chances a small movement, uncurling one cold pale hand to push aside the slash she had cut with her knife in the heavy green canvas of the med tent so she could spy on the progress the doctors were making.

Her gaze finds the rusted legs of a steel table. Blood is splashed under the table, staining the dirty plastic mat that served as a floor. There is _a lot_ of blood. It seems like more than any person could afford to lose and still be alive to tell about it after. Julie swallows and closes her eyes for a brief moment before she forces herself to look up, up the rusted legs, past the bloodstained blue smocks of the surgeons and nurses, her father standing obstinately at the foot of the table with his arms crossed and wearing a frown, to R's body lying motionless on the table.

As she watches with hungry desperate eyes, Nora, decked out in scrubs and a surgical mask, hands a doctor a pair of small silver scissors. There is a snipping sound that cracks like a gunshot in Julie's ears, and suddenly the surgeon is stripping off his bloody gloves, dropping them in a hazmat bin, and turning to speak to Grigio who now drops the guise of Julie's father and puts on the mask of General like he's putting on a suit of armor.

That armor slides on much too easily. She forces herself to look at Nora, who is looking back at her with a white and strained face. Nora offers her a barely imperceptible shrug and a brave wobbly smile before she is called away by another surgeon.

R isn't moving and Julie can't look anymore.

She drops the tent fold she's holding and drops her face onto her knees and begins to rock back and forth, unable to force her grief back into the abyss inside of her.

Before she can really get into feeling sorry for herself though, sorry for _everything_, a hand falls heavily onto her shoulder. That hand smells like a dead cat behind a dumpster in July.

She looks up and M is crouching awkwardly in front of her, concern on his gray ugly face. He pushes at her shoulder, and while he is extremely bad at it, she is touched that he is trying to console her.

"It'll...be..o-kay," he manages, stumbling over his syllables like a toddler learning to walk over a floor strewn with legos.

Julie swipes a filthy sleeve across her equally filthy face and sniffles. "Thanks."

She stands and brushes as much of the goop off of her butt as she can, and tries not to notice how M's joints crackle and pop when he lurches to his feet. "I'm going to see how he is," she says, squaring her shoulders and putting on the bravest game face she can manage.

The dead are all looking at her like she's made of solid gold, spat out from the sun. Julie wants to shout at them, tell them that whatever R said about her isn't true, that she is a _freaking MESS_, that it took two soldiers and a nurse to haul her kicking and screaming out of the med tent and away from him. She bottles up her screams though, and does her best to do the same for her tears, though some manage to escape despite her best efforts.

M nods gravely. "We'll...be here."

Julie ducks into the tent and skirts the walls, and does her best to look small and not crazy. Kevin threatened to hog tie her when she kicked him the junk last time, it would suck if he saw her and made good on his threat.

The med tent is fairly empty. There is no sign of her father and the medical staff have all drifted off to other tasks elsewhere. R has been moved from that horrible table under a glaring white light to a dark cot in the corner.

A single soldier stands guard across the room from R's bed. She's lucky it isn't Kevin. Julie also counts it as a positive that his hand rests easily and unworried on the butt of his assault rifle, instead of on the trigger. He only rolls his eyes when she skulks into the room like a shabby wet ninja and approaches R's bed.

She is surprised to see R's newly golden eyes open and looking at her, and when he sees her looking at him, he offers a small smile.

"Hey." His voice is a croak, and she can't tell whether it's his vocal cords still learning their new freedoms, or because they had no sedatives to spare when they operated on him.

"Hey, yourself." She can only manage a whisper. Julie feels like she's in church or something, and at risk of disturbing the dead. Which is ridiculous, because R isn't dead, not anymore.

R tries to shrug, but winces, and then the swatch of white gauze encircling his chest and shoulder turns pink and then darkens to red. Julie looks around wildly for the doctor, but R catches her hand.

"It's okay. They said it would ooze for a bit, which is why I shouldn't move."

Julie feels awful, like she clubbed a puppy or accidentally stole an orphan's pudding. She pulls a chair over to his bed, conscious that the soldier behind her is watching the display curiously, like a biologist watching a pair of weird new beetles that might either mate or try to eat each other.

She decides that she is going to ignore him. She is too cold, too tired, and too strung out to care what he thinks. All she wants now is R. R almost _died_ for crying out loud, and even with him lying there in clean bandages and pink skinned and breathing and very much alive, she still feels like if she blinks something else catastrophic will happen. So she sits there, knees pressed hard together, hunched over his warm hand sitting in her lap, like maybe she will fly into a million pieces if she makes any sudden movements. R worms his hand around so he can squeeze her fingers.

"We cut it close," Julie says, before he can open his mouth and say whatever comforting thing he had on his mind. "Too, too close. We are not doing this again."

"Too late," R says tugging on her hand, "We have to finish what we started. Don't worry, I'll keep you safe."

She actually does a fair impression of a zombie growl as she crawls into bed with him, carefully navigating his bandaged chest and shoulder so that she can tuck herself up against his other side. There is a lot of him to go around; R is frigging huge, all gangly limbs and scrawny joints. Julie decides that the first order of business when he finally gets out of the med tent will be to stuff him full of cheeseburgers and beer. She doesn't know where she will get them, but dammit it is going to happen.

She forgets all her plans and worries and fears though as she burrows into him, getting comfortable. R's body is warm now, almost hot, and she can't help the sleepy exhaustion seeping into her limbs when she slides her head onto his shoulder.

There is something on her mind, something she wants to tell him. It has been niggling at her for days, pushing at her while they dodged Boneys and bullets, even before that mind blowing kiss in the cistern.

"Hey R?" Her voice is small, muffled in his dirty red hoodie. They cut his shirt off of him to get the bullet out, but left his hoodie, and Julie can't bring herself to bridge the few inches of cloth between her cheek and his skin. So her head remains awkwardly balanced on his shoulder.

"Mmm?" He sounds half asleep.

"I-I need to tell you something." _I love you._

She can feel him shift at the serious, almost desperate tone in her voice, and knows he's trying to look down at her. He can't, because her head is in the way and Julie doesn't move because she is afraid to look at him. If she looks at him she'll lose her nerve.

"R, I-" Julie swallows and takes a deep breath. The words are sticking in her throat like molasses. She is afraid of what saying them will mean, everyone she's ever said those words to has died horribly. She knows it's incredibly stupid, but if she's jinxed she doesn't want to lay it on R.

"Hey! You can't come in here!" The guard's shout cuts her off and Julie's words evaporate from her like ice under the sun.

M either doesn't hear the guard or doesn't care and comes crashing into the tent, brushing past the poor man with an energetic rasp, "Hi!"

Julie presses her flaming red face into R's neck and mutters a quiet "Dammit."

M shambles up to R's bedside, leaving the guard spluttering angrily behind him. He looks at Julie, or rather looks at her red tinged ears which is the only part of her visible besides her mop of blond hair. "You... didn't come ...back," he says by way explanation.

If Julie had been looking, she would have seen R shoot M a dirty look and mouth _'You have the worst timing ever.'_

M heaves a loud theatrical sigh. "Fine. I can...see..I'm inter..rupting." His voice gets closer and much quieter, and Julie figures he must have bent down close to R.

"Don't..cut it so close...next time, kid," M says harshly, "I...m-mean it. I got...grey hairs over you."

Julie emerges from R's shoulder when she hears him grunt with pain, and immediately feels awful for squashing his good arm. R slowly and painfully raises his arm to clap M on the shoulder, who nods gravely and shuffles out of the door, tossing the annoyed guard another "Hi!" on the way out.

R's arm drops down to the mattress and lets loose a long, tired sigh. She can feel him glance down at her. "What were you going to say?" His voice is soft and rough, and she finds that she somewhat misses his stutter. It was cute.

"It was nothing." Her nerve has been so lost, it's probably at the bottom of the Mariana Trench by now. "I'll tell you later."

"Okay." He doesn't press her further, but the arm she has pinned underneath her slithers out to curl around her shoulders, rolling her snugly into him.

His hand cups the back of her head, fingers stroking through her hair. Suddenly it occurs to her that she hasn't really solid night's sleep since she walked out of the compound with the salvage team over a week ago. R's hand is drooping against her head and she realizes that she can't really complain: he probably has years of sleep to make up for, since zombies don't sleep, let alone dream.

She worms closer to him and sighs, cheek against skin and her forehead against his neck. His head rolls to rest against hers, and every time he breaths she can feel it on her hair.

She's not exactly happy, per se, it's deeper than that. Julie finally realizes what it is, as the feeling has been absent from her life for so long she has forgotten the feeling. It is alien to her, but delicious as well. It takes her a moment to even put a name to it, which says something for how long she has gone without it.

Ensconced in R's arms, she is content. Safe.

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_Fin_


	3. Interregnum

**Author's Note: **Okay, it's a good bet that this is the last chapter. I'm losing my thunder, lol. Anyway, thanks for all of the thoughts guys, this has been fun!

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**Interregnum**

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It has been three months and five days since the reckoning- when both the dead and the living began to rise. The zombies are somewhat human, and the humans are, well, somewhat better.

The world is still a terrible place, cloaked in danger and in darkness, but there is a tinge clinging stubbornly to it and Julie Grigio, formerly Julie Cabernet, knows exactly what it is: hope, that one shining light that leapt out of Pandora's Box along with the blackness and despair. It is the primary driving reason why she is currently walking unafraid down a silent side street in a dilapidated bloodstained city with dusk falling over the skyscrapers like a blanket.

She's not scared because she is holding R's warm hand in one of hers, swinging it loosely as they walk, and in her other she holds a black coated Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun. The shotgun is mostly a safety precaution, General Grigio would not have let his daughter leave the relative safety of the human stronghold without it. Actually, he hadn't wanted her to leave at all.

Looking backward, he hadn't had much of a choice since he'd botched the initial merger talks with Goldman Dome due to his ruthless despair. Julie and R were a last resort, the only emissaries that could in complete honesty get the frightened citizens of Goldman Dome to see the hope that shone at the end of a long dark tunnel.

Julie knows it was a huge risk for them to knock on Goldman Dome's front door, especially for R, since it seems the whole world knows the creature he used to be.

Goldman Dome had not been as far gone as her city though. She smiles as she remembers the children first creeping forward to touch R's scars with wonder: healed bullet wounds, random scratches, and bite marks from Boneys. All chilling evidence from his past life, though that evidence is saved by warm skin and gold eyes that are a far cry from undead ethereal grey .

They hadn't said yes to a relationship with Grigio's Stadium city, but Julie and R hadn't gotten shot either. That was always a plus.

Julie quits thinking over what she could have done, might have said. She and R laid out bare the truth, there was nothing more to do after that but go home. Goldman Dome will either join forces with their odd little community, or they won't. Strangely she doesn't want to go back to their city, not just yet. It's funny when she thinks about it: most girls dream of walking with their lovers through sparkly glades or pretty parks, skipping stones in ponds or feeding ducks. She's holding hands with R while they take turns kicking a empty Cola can down a broken street, basking in the companionable silence.

Julie can't remember ever being this happy. She probably has, but it's buried under a lifetime of disappointment.

Stars are starting to twinkle through a darkening purple sky and the shadows are getting longer when she squeezes R's hand, coming to a stop.

"We should probably find a place to hole up," Julie tells him, watching the skyline go rapidly from burnt orange to a dangerous maroon. "I'm tired and my feet hurt."

She decides that isn't a lie, not quite, though the main reason is that she just wants time alone with R, to have him all to herself. Her city is a beautiful place filled with monsters and people coming together and rediscovering hope, but it is not exactly a place when the saviors of the world can get serious alone time often. Especially when the walls are so damn thin, the neighbors can hear you boil water.

R grins at her, a wicked twitch of the lips that says he knows exactly what the subtext of her speech was, what she is really after. He doesn't call her bluff. Instead, he slides a hand through her thick blond hair and bends down and kisses her soundly.

"The airport is only a few miles away," he suggests. "Old times' sake?"

Julie rolls her eyes. "You just want to go back to your lair so you can drag all your loot back to our room."

His grin widens. "C'mon, some of that stuff was cool."

"Hoarder," she says affectionately. "Okay, lead the way to the house jet."

R chuckles and squats down in front of her. "Would the lady like a ride?"

They both know she isn't tired in the least, that she's only trying to finagle the equivalent of a post apocalypse date into happening, but Julie isn't one to turn down free piggy-back rides from R. That would be silly. She slides the shotgun strap over her head so her arms are free to wrap loosely around his neck. His hands curl under her butt, fingers twining to form a chair that occasionally gives her hind end a cheeky squeeze.

She loves the press of his hipbones on the insides of her thighs, his hands gripping her legs, his shaggy black hair tickling her check and neck, and the _woosh_ when he stands. Piggy-back rides are awesome. It's weird seeing the world from his height, even if he is only half a foot taller than she is.

"Comfortable?" R asks.

Julie tucks her nose into the neckline of his hoodie, one of her favorite things to do, and inhales. "Mmmhmm."

R's much longer legs can cover a lot more ground more quickly than she can, even with his burden, and it's not long when they are creeping quietly into a silent empty airport. Or rather, R is doing the creeping while Julie keeps her eyes peeled for trouble.

Julie would like nothing more than to nibble on his ear, or tickle him and try to annoy him into dropping her, but the flickering shadows created by dying florescent lights do not allow for fooling around. The Boneys are less of a threat than they used to be, and random feral zombie encounters are rare, but Julie figures it's common sense to not poke Murphey's Law in the eye with a stick if she doesn't have to.

She is glad when they reach R's old jet home without a problem. R rolls the door shut and locks it, and they both breath a collective sigh of relief. R goes to see if there are any cans of food left over in the serving cart, but Julie catches his hand. It has been far too long since she has properly made out with him. She presses him up against the curved wall of the plane, raising herself up on tiptoe so she can kiss him.

It's a hard, fierce kiss that Julie tries to pour all of her feelings into, branding herself onto his mouth. R gives as good as he gets, making her toes curl and her skin tingle when his tongue licks along hers. She is in the process of trying to scale him like a spider monkey while at the same time not break their kiss, and R is helping by hiking her legs up around his waist, when her stomach rumbles impatiently. It is so loud in the quiet jet that Julie drops her legs from around him in embarrassment, holding her complaining guts in humiliation.

"I am so, so sorry," she mumbles, face blushing a bright fire engine red.

He laughs at her and pokes her in the stomach. The passion of the moment has evaporated due to her demanding tummy, but all of the affection is still there. R tugs Julie to him in a hug, giving her a gentle squeeze. "It's okay. Let's go feed the beast, before you take matters into your own hands."

Julie puts her hands on her hips. "Oh come on, I don't bite."

R gives her a look.

"Well I don't bite hard, anyway. Stop looking at me in that tone."

"Me? I would never," R said innocently, turning to root through the stewardess's long abandoned trolley.

Julie playfully swats his backside as she walks past him in search of bedding to put down on the hard, dirty floor of the plane. "Besides, I distinctly recall who exactly wanted to bite whom when we first met. You, buster, are guilty of wanting to chew on my fabulous hide."

R pulls out cans of bacon and beans, and cubed peaches. When he cranks open the first can the heavy sweet scent of sugared peaches and syrup fills the stale air of the plan like someone sprayed peach Febreze everywhere. Julie inhales greedily as she pulls off seat cushions, laying them out on the floor like a crude mattress. When R was a zombie, he pulled some chairs out of First Class in order to make space for his collection, so this is where she sets the cushions. She lets the heavy scent of peaches roll in through her nose, and memorizes its delicate tastes and nuances. She isn't sure when they're going to eat like this again. Nothing is ever certain with the end of the world.

R puts a dented tin spoon in one can and a plastic spork in another. Dinner is served. "I never wanted to eat you," he tells her thoughtfully. "I mean, I was pretty hungry that day, ravenous even. Then I saw you and it was like someone clubbed me over the head," R says honestly. "Even before the thing with Perry- it felt like I got a taser to the brain. I didn't know what you were, couldn't put to words what I felt, I just knew I couldn't let anyone hurt you. I had to-"

"Keep me safe," she says softly.

"Keep you safe," R agrees.

Julie finds all of the airplane blankets she can, and there are a lot of them, so she figures R must have raided other planes in his zombie days, and she spreads them out on the cushions. There's a few thick purple Yankee candles that smell like grape Koolaid buried under a pile of magazine. Julie sets them up and lights them a safe distance from the bed. R brings over the cans and they both strip fast in the cool air, leaving their dirty and grimy travel clothes laid out over the seats, then scramble under the blankets. It's not exactly chilly in the plane, but it isn't the tropics either.

R holds the cans when Julie gets comfortable, then he arranges himself around her when she's still. They end up enshrined in a massive pile of airplane blankets, with R half propped up on his elbow, tipping peaches into Julie's mouth. Julie is flat on her back juggling her own can of bacon and beans while she tries to catch the peach bits R is dropping onto her face.

He has terrible aim. Most of them end up in her mouth though, mainly because Julie is freaking _starving_ and goes after the falling peaches like a shark after a baby seal.

When all the cans are empty, Julie tosses them into a corner, out of sight out of mind. She snuggles into R, wrapping around her arms around his back so she can stick her cold hands underneath him. R winces when her chilly feet follow suit, coming to rest on his calves.

"Geez Julie, have you been putting ice cubes in your boots?"

"Starting to regret rescuing me all those times?" Julie asks, grinning and waggling her icy fingers, reveling in his warm skin.

R grabs one of the offending fingers and kisses it. "Never. You're stuck with me, unfortunately. Though you do get into trouble more often than anybody I know."

"I don't do it on purpose," Julie protests, before she sees he's making fun of her. "Cheeseball," she mutters.

R smiles at her and smooths a heavy lock of blond hair off of her face. Julie closes her eyes when he touches her, concentrating on the feel of his hand on her face.

"Hey R?" she asks after a while.

"Yeah?"

"Do you think we won Goldman Dome over?" Julie says, tilting her head up so she can see his face. "Do you think they'll agree to the merger?"

R hesitates before answering, choosing his words carefully. "I think there's still trust that needs to be built. Those people are scared and lost in the dark, but they're trying. Even if it doesn't work we can't give up. We can never give up."

It strikes her again just how unique R is. His optimism, his desperate drive to be more than he is. Of all the cosmic workings, the Universe allowed her to crash into him. She wouldn't trade that for the world. Julie drops her head back onto his chest, and R holds her close. "I'm glad you found me," she whispers.

"Me too," R says it back. "Me too."

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_Fin_


End file.
